Milton França´s blog

The best of Prog rock

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Brazil's
President Dilma Rousseff, impeached, was suspended from Office

Brazilian senators voted on May 11 to suspend President
Dilma Rousseff and open an impeachment trial, effectively taking the Workers'
Party from office after 13 years in power.

Rousseff, the country's first female president, promised
that she will continue fighting, calling the impeachment "dirty,"
"fraudulent" and "a coup."

Rousseff, a former leftist militant who was jailed and
tortured as a young woman by Brazil's military dictatorship, said her
suspension was "an injustice that hurt more than torture."

"I will fight with all the available legal tools to
serve out the term I was elected to," she said. "I may have made
mistakes, but I committed no crimes."

Rousseff's chances for a comeback are remote. The
decision came after an all-night debate that ended with 55 of Brazil's 81
senators voting to put her on Trial. Under Brazilian law, she is now suspended
for up to 180 days during the trial.

The 55 votes against her exceeded the majority that would
eventually be needed to permanently remove her at the end of the impeachment
trial.

Vocabulary:

office - posto, cargo coup – golpe

serve
out the term – exercer o cargo trial – julgamento

up
to – até eventually
– finalmente

tools
– ferramentas power
- poder

1.
What is correct according to the text:

a)
President Dilma Rousseff was elected on May 11, 2016.

b)
The Workers´ Party (PT) stayed in power for more than 13 years.

c)
More than 50 senators voted in favor of putting the president Dilma on Trial.

d)
55 is the total number of senators in Brazil.

e)
Dilma Rousseff has a great chance of returning to Office.

2. Which of these sentences is in the Simple
Past?

a)
She will continue fighting, calling the impeachment
"dirty," "fraudulent" and "a coup."

b)
Rousseff's chances for a comeback are remote.

c) I may have made mistakes.

d) The decision came after an all-night debate.

e) I will fight with all the available legal tools to
serve out the term.

3. Which of these words in NOT a verb?

a) taking

b) fighting

c) calling

d) votin

e) during

4. According to the picture above:

a) More people prefer to travel to the UK than the USA.

b) Fewer people prefer to travel to Ireland than Canada.

c) More people prefer to travel to the USA than the UK.

d) Fewer people prefer to travel to Canada than New
Zealand.

e) More people prefer to travel to Australia than Canada
and New Zealand together.

5. IF is used in Conditional Sentences (sentences
indicating a condition to do something). Which of these Conditional Sentences
is INCORRECT?

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Brazil’s
supreme court has approved the investigation of dozens of politicians,
including a former president (Collor de Melo) and leaders of congress, for
alleged connections to what prosecutors call the country’s biggest ever
corruption scandal.

In total, 54
people are to be investigated, including 21 federal deputies and 12 senators —
though that figure is expected to grow as evidence is gathered on corruption
involving the state oil company Petrobras.

The
investigations and any possible trials will take years to play out, but the
action announced on Friday throws the second term of president Dilma Rousseff
into further disarray as she faces dueling political and economic crises. She
is not being investigated despite serving as chair of the Petrobras board for
several years as the kickback scheme played out.

“You can’t put this genie back in the bottle.
People are going to have to face the consequences,” said Paulo Sotero, director
of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
in Washington. “There used to be the idea that people in positions of power in
Brazil were untouchable. They’re no longer untouchable.”

Federal
investigators revealed a year ago that they had started an investigation into
the scheme, and efforts until now focused efforts on big construction and
engineering firms that allegedly paid over $800m in bribes and other funds. The
money purportedly won them inflated contracts with Petrobras and prosecutors
say some of that cash flowed into the campaign coffers of the president’s
Workers’ Party and its allies.

Among those
the high court said would now be investigated are former president and current
senator Fernando Collor, who was forced from the presidency by a corruption
scandal in 1992 before making a political comeback in recent years.

Also to be
investigated are senate leader Renan Calheiros and Eduardo Cunha, who is the
leader of the lower house. Both are members of the powerful Brazilian
Democratic Movement Party, part of the governing coalition led by the Workers’
Party. Both have already shown they are ready to create serious gridlock in
congress because of the investigation.

Ex—president Fernando Collor

Senate leader Renan Calheiros

Leader of the Lower House Eduardo Cunha

Rosemary Segurado, a political scientist at the
University of Sao Paulo, said the two congressional leaders would use the
investigation as a “bargaining chip” if Rousseff’s government fails to protect
them in some fashion, “causing problems by blocking important projects”. She
cited tax, fiscal and political reforms needed as Brazil’s economy stalls into
recession.

The scandal has seriously damaged the reputation of
Petrobras, Brazil’s largest company. It is responsible for tapping upward of
100 billion barrels of offshore oil found in recent years, wealth that leaders
have repeatedly said they view as the nation’s “passport” to achieving
developed-world status. But the debt-plagued company is struggling — it was
recently downgraded to junk status by Moody’s Investors Service and it said
this week it would sharply cut back investment and sell off assets.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

One of my dreams came true on February 9, 2014. On
that very special day I had the chance of going to a Transatlantic´s live
concert at Highline Ballroom, Manhattan. Simply unforgettable!!! I stayed all
the time very close to the stage where I had a privileged view of all the
members, principally Mike Portnoy, as you can see below:

Transatlantic is a multinational progressive rock
supergroup with members of different bands: Neal Morse (ex-Spock´s Beard),
Mike Portnoy (ex-Dream Theater), Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings) and Pete
Trewavas (Marillion). They formed the band in 1999 as a side project to their
original bands, disbanded in 2002 and reunited in 2009.

Daniel Gildenlow (from the Swedish band Pain of
Salvation) is not an official member but he often joins them during live
concerts. However, due to illness, he was replaced by Ted Leonard (Enchant)
during the 2014 tour. What a pity!

Their first album was released in 2000. It was called
SMPT:e which is a play on words, as a combination of the members´ last name
initials as well as a common machine protocol used in recording. It received
strong critical reviews including “some of the best progressive rock music ever
produced”

The second album, the 2001´s Bridge Across Forever had
only four tracks; very long songs as you can imagine. One of them is the
26-minute “Duel with the Devil”.

The Whirlwind is their third album, released in
October 2009. A special edition of the album was also released including a
second disc with four additional original tracks and four cover tracks.

And they have a fourth album the 2014´s Kaleidoscope.
In 2014 they toured in the United States and Europe, including a special
performance on the “Progressive Nation at Sea” cruise created by Mike Portnoy.
The band played two shows, with the first featuring the entire Kaleidoscope
album and the second including guest performances by famous progressive rock
artists such as Jon Anderson of Yes. On September 11, 2014, Kaleidoscope won “Album
of the year” at the third annual Progressive Music Awards.

Friday, February 27, 2015

If you’re one of the 70% of cell-phone users who use
text messaging, you know that C U L8R means “See you later.”

“Texting” is now the new way to talk (or “tlk”),
especially for young people. But why is that?

IT’S A LOVE THING – There’s no doubt about it, text
messages are for personal communication. Only 10% of messages are work related,
and the peak hours for texting are between 10:30 and 11:00 at night!

Most users (64%) say texting is a good way to send
romantic messages – it’s easier to say “I love you” in a text message than in a
phone call. Maybe that explains why more people now use texting to send
Valentine’s Day messages.

UPSIDES AND DOWNSIDES – Generally, texting is cheaper
than making phone calls. It’s also more direct, since you can send or get
information without having to ask and answer polite “How are you?” questions.

And it’s more discreet, too. No one can hear your
“conversations,” and you can receive text messages almost anywhere – at work,
in meetings, or in class. You can also use texting in noisy places like
nightclubs, where using a cell phone is difficult.

A NEW LANGUAGE? – Because it’s quicker to “write”
without apostrophes and vowels, texting has its own language. And it’s fun to
use the symbols. There’s a best-selling dictionary (or “dxnre”) for texting
called Wan2tlk?

Some people say that a texting encourages bad
punctuation and spelling. On the other hand, more teens are writing than ever
before. Now, that has to be a good thing.

As 75-year-old villager Antônio Gomes told us
stories of growing up in Boca do Mamirauá, a tiny settlement in the northern
Amazon rainforest, I tried to ignore the tiny blue flies biting through my
trousers.

Despite my interest in hearing how locals
survive in this remote part of the Brazilian rainforest, now a part of the
Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, I was grateful to escape when he
finished, finding refuge in one of the tall wooden houses.

(When the Amazon floods, all of its residents – both animals and people
– have to adopt an amphibious lifestyle. Kim Schandorff/Getty)

The houses hover some 3m above the ground.
They are not unusual: almost everything in the Mamirauá reserve is on stilts,
even the chicken coop. It has to be. Although much of Brazil is currently
suffering one of the worst droughts in decades, this part of the Amazon is
almost completely flooded for the six-month wet season. By April, the end of
the rainy season, the river rises up to 10m high and overflows its banks. As a
result, all living things in the forest, including locals, must adopt an
amphibious lifestyle. Even the jaguars have learned to adapt by living in tree
branches when the floods arrive.

Only 1,000 tourists per year are allowed to
visit Mamirauá, which, at 57,000sqkm, is the largest wildlife reserve in the
country. Created in 1984 to save the once-endangered uakari monkey, the reserve
is the most carefully managed and protected part of the Amazon – and is also
home to what many consider Brazil’s most successful sustainable tourist resort,
the Uakari Floating Lodge. “If [the reserve] had not been created,” guide
Francisco Nogeuira said, “the rivers and lakes would be empty of fish, and who
knows how many trees would remain today?”

The capital of the French republic is better
known for beheading monarchs than celebrating them. But Paris went wild for
Britain’s queen during her state visit last week. Crowds on the Champs-Elysées
cheered as her royal convoy drove past. Socialist ministers lined up
enthusiastically to greet her at her birthday garden party.

The queen’s arrival at the international
ceremony on “Sword” beach to remember the 70th anniversary of D-Day drew louder
applause than that of America’s president. Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of
Paris, even had a flower market named after her on the capital’s Ile de la
Cité, which happens to be home to the Conciergerie prison where
Marie-Antoinette was held before being carted to the guillotine in 1793. “The
queen of the French” ran a headline in Le Monde, a left-wing daily.

Why are the French so smitten by the world’s
longest-reigning queen?

Partly because she embodies the post-war era
in which their modern republic was born: she was crowned in 1953 and has known all
seven presidents of the Fifth Republic. Her affection for France, and grasp of
the language, also help. […] After a state dinner at the Elyzée Palace, with
François Hollande, the president, she spoke of her “grande affection” for the French people. This was the queen’s fifth
state visit to the republic.

Another reason is that the French, shorn of
their own monarchy, have long become avid voyeurs of everybody else’s. Point de vue and Paris-Match, two magazines that splash photos of royals across
their pages, were launched back in the 1940s. The French turned the Monaco
royals into celebrities before reality television invented instant fame for
everybody else. In 2011 the French cleared the airwaves to cover Prince
William’s wedding on live public television; 9m viewers tuned in to watch.

Perhaps the hidden reason for French royal
fervour, though, is a secret envy mixed with regret. Mr Hollande, stuck with a
16% popularity rating, is said to have noted wryly how refreshing it was to
hear cheering crowds when he accompanied the queen. Asked in a poll what they
thought today of the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, more of the French (29%)
judged it “unfair” than “understandable” (23%). The French “have a royalty
complex”, wrote Hervé Gattegno in Le Point, and have built their republic on monarchical traditions
as if to compensate. The president, who has more sweeping powers than almost
any other modern democratic leader, is fussed over by much pomp and
splendour—and the seat of the presidency is a palace.

(In: The French
and monarchy. The Economist, vol. 411, number 8891. June, 14th 2014. Adaptado)

11.
Considering both theme and gender of the text, more information could be added
to the title, as a subheading.

15. The
sentences: “Marie-Antoinette
was held …”; “Point de vue and Paris-Match […] were
launched back in the 1940s; “she was crowned in
1953…”, and “The president […] is fussed over by
much pomp and splendour” are all in the

a)
Imperative Form. d)
Present Perfect.

b)
Conditional Tense. e)
Past Perfect Continuous.

c)
Passive Voice.

16. Na
frase “The capital of
the French republic is better known for beheading monarchs than
celebrating them.”, a palavra em destaque significa

a) decapitar. d)
depor.

b) debochar. e) destronar.

c) deportar.

Text 6

Women in the rodeo

Disponível em:
http://allenrussell.photoshelter.com/image

In the huge, open lands of the American west,
herding cattle is one way to make a living. The image of the cowboy on his
horse is a familiar one, ……………… in reality, women also participate in ranch
work. This reality can be seen in the rodeo, …………. cowboys and cowgirls compete
in roping young steer, and riding adult bulls. Throwing a rope around a steer
is something ranchers must do ………………….. give the young animals medicine or to
mark the steers as their property. ……………….., riding on the back of a large and angry
bull is purely for sport – a brutal and dangerous sport. ……………….., the danger
doesn’t stop the men and women who love the rodeo.”